Message from the Chairman

I look forward to an exciting year at the FEC. My hope is that we will have as much success this year as we had in 2006.

It is hard to deny that last year was among the most successful in the agency’s history. By almost any measure, the FEC achieved more than it ever has.

In enforcement, the agency closed cases with higher penalties than ever before (including the largest penalty in FEC history, $3.8 million against Freddie Mac) and we did it faster (over 30% faster) than four years ago. In the policy arena, the agency was similarly busy, handling six major rulemakings and over 30 advisory opinions, including some of the most difficult issues left over from the Shays litigation and BCRA.

The Commission processed over 80,000 reports last year that detailed over $2.4 billion in receipts and $2.7 billion in disbursements.

The Audit Division worked its way through the most difficult issues in the presidential audits and is now in the process of revising the way Title 2 audits are conducted in order to reduce unnecessary delay.

The FEC began 2006 with the very difficult decision to cancel its regional conferences to help balance the budget for the year. Faced with this challenge, the Information Division adapted its outreach program to train almost as many people as it would in a typical year. At the same time, the Information Division has led the agency in developing innovative improvements in how we communicate with the public. These changes include moving from first-class mail to e-mail to deliver courtesy documents and targeting communications to certain types of committees that frequently commit inadvertent violations of the law.

While we had many measurable successes last year, the thing that I am most proud of, and the thing I know we will continue with, is a rigorous look at how we provide services to the public and a search for ways we can be more effective, given the limited resources we have. We must constantly ask ourselves if we are fulfilling our mission and be willing to change in order to improve.

One example, though it is one of many, stands out. In April, we learned that the campaign manager for a House candidate fled to South America with almost all of the campaign’s cash. When the campaign manager’s parents offered to pay back the missing money to the campaign, the committee contacted the agency to ask whether the parent’s payment would be an illegal contribution because the repayment would have been well in excess of the contribution limits. The committee was in dire straits. They were without funds but did not want to accept an illegal contribution to keep their campaign going. While it traditionally would have taken months for us to provide an answer, the Office of General Counsel revised the advisory opinion process to ensure that we could provide a timely answer both in that case and other time sensitive matters in the future. As a result, the agency was able to give the committee an answer less than three weeks after the request. While in some ways this was a simple and minor change, it is a good example of how the FEC staff is willing to reconsider and alter our practices to improve the quality of the services we deliver.

Technological changes have been and will continue to be an important part of the agency’s reform efforts. I am very excited about the new technologies the agency put in place last year, such as podcasting, Treasurers’ Tips, and the advisory opinion searchable database that is near completion. I look forward to the Information Technology Division rolling out further improvements in the year ahead.

These are all examples of the increasingly dynamic and innovative way in which the agency is approaching its responsibilities.

While I am certain the year ahead will hold many unexpected challenges, I am also confident that with a lot of hard work and focus, we can look back next year at this time and again feel proud of how much we have achieved.